


The Art of War

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: it's a dangerous business, going out your door (you never know where you might be swept off to) [3]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Canon-Typical Racism, Canon-Typical Sexism, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War is the only good reason to let Kourrem bint Kemail and her atrocious bedside manner loose on anyone, let alone vulnerable patients and cross generals. Roald of Conté can attest to this personally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to repeat my note from Sand In The Wind - that I care very much about Kourrem's portrayal and recognise that I may have blundered unintentionally, and if I have screwed up, I would really appreciate being told so I can fix my mess.

            Kourrem bint Kemail rode up to Fort Giantkiller with a disapproving expression on her face, the dust of a hundred countries on her tightly wound scarf, and a spatter of blood on the edge of her robe.

 

            “I was summoned,” she said rather loftily to the guards, who were sufficiently awed by her – one woman, with only the belongings a couple of heavily laden saddlebags and a pack could hold and a very pretty horse - that General Vanget came out in a towering temper to address her.

 

            “You weren’t called to _my_ fort,” he said disrespectfully.

 

            “Yes, I was,” Mistress Kemail said flatly, and produced a small roll of parchment from one wide sleeve, which she handed to General Vanget. He read it, snorted in a manner betokening extreme distaste, and turned and stamped back into the fort.

 

            Mistress Kemail showed no expression, but followed him sedately, sharp eyes cataloguing everything about the fortress as she entered and handed her horse off to a grinning Bazhir soldier, who addressed her in her own language and received a gracious smile and a ripple of commentary in return.

 

            Roald tapped his fingers on the wood of the parapet and watched her with interest. Mistress Kemail was not a regular feature in anyone’s life; her peregrinations were almost as legendary as her scoldings, and Roald had seen her exactly once in the past eight years, on which occasion she had been in and out of meetings with his father and lectures at the university. Roald had been a page at the time and had met her only once during her whole four-month stay, during which she had asked him clever questions and given him rose-flavoured sweets from Tyra and taught him a few better spells for wilderness survival than Harailt of Aili had ever known.

 

            Her presence here would certainly relieve the monotony of playing at being a knight while his friends and subjects risked their lives. She might even find something useful for him to do.

 

            Mistress Kemail’s leisurely examination of the fort stopped, and her eyes narrowed; Roald froze as he realised she was staring straight at him.

 

            Then she cracked a tiny smile, and inclined her head a fraction.

 

            When she broke her gaze and made her way into the hospital, evidently about to turn it upside-down, Roald sagged against the parapet, feeling slightly drained.

 

            “Promising, your highness,” Sir Sacherell remarked.

 

            Roald made a small, squeaking noise unbefitting the crown prince, and wondered for the hundredth time why Sir Sacherell was here. Was it solely to sneak up behind him and disconcert him?

 

            “Exactly so, your highness,” Sir Sacherell said, and grinned fiercely. “Where Kourrem goes, mayhem follows. But it all ends up all right in the end.”

 

            “Oh good,” Roald said, instead of ‘oh gods’.

 

            “Five will get you ten,” Sir Sacherell declared, nodding sagely, “that Vanget tries to have her thrown out by the end of the week.”

 

            “Not buying it,” Roald said, without committing himself to actual monetary expenditure. He never bet money with Sir Sacherell; it was a rule, up there with Never Drink With Zahir, Never Rely On Cleon (Unless You Absolutely Must) and Never Let Neal Rant For Upwards Of An Hour. “End of the day.”

 

            There was a roar of fury from the headquarters, drifting gently towards them on the bitter northern breeze.

 

            “ _Here_ we go,” Sir Sacherell said, with totally unwarranted glee.

 

            Feeling sorely in need of a soothing pastime, Roald went away to write to Shinko.

 

***

 

            The soothing influence of unloading his worries onto paper was interrupted by a very loud banging on the door. Roald flung his pen down crossly and covered the distance to the door in two long strides before wrenching the door open and glowering at the person on the other side. Squire Owen, jolliness impaired by the sight of the heir to the throne staring poisonously out at him, took a step back.

 

            “Oh, Jesslaw,” Roald said, and relaxed slightly; he couldn’t freeze out a friend of Kel’s. “What is it?”

 

            “Er – General Vanget bids you to dinner, sir,” Squire Owen said.

 

            Several thoughts went through Roald’s head. Few of them were polite. “When? Where?”

 

            “In two bells’ time,” Squire Owen said promptly, “in the general’s quarters. It’s a dinner to welcome Mistress Kemail, sir.”

 

            “Is it really?” Roald said before he could stop himself.

 

            Squire Owen nodded as if he didn’t trust himself to open his mouth. Roald’s limited acquaintance with him suggested that that was a wise decision.

 

            Roald gave him a measuring stare. “Come in, squire.”

 

            Jesslaw’s eyes widened, and he sidled into Roald’s quarters, looking profoundly uncomfortable.

 

            “Take a seat,” Roald invited genially, seating himself at the chair drawn up to his desk.

 

            Jesslaw looked around with vague panic, and eventually perched on the edge of the small armchair tucked into a corner.

 

            “If you were talking to Kel,” Roald began, then recalled Jesslaw’s chivalric tendencies and added “Or Neal, or Merric... What would you say about the general reaction to Mistress Kemail’s arrival? Be as specific as you like. None of this will go beyond these four walls.”

 

            “We-ll, your highness,” Jesslaw started uncertainly, “the men-at-arms and the younger knights, mostly, they aren’t very sure. I don’t think they care. The older knights, like Sir Sacherell?” He looked at Roald for confirmation, so Roald obligingly nodded. “Some of them are very pleased, and some of them are angry. One of the Stone Mountains called her a – said rude things about her. Sir Zahir dealt with him.”

 

            “Good for Sir Zahir,” Roald said blandly.

 

            Jesslaw grinned. “The Bazhir men-at-arms are all thrilled. It’s like a lucky mascot has arrived, or a sort of powerful ghost. They’re all really polite to her, if there’s anything she wants they’ll see it done, but they’re a little... frightened of her, I think? They think of her as someone to – er - be really nice to-”

 

            “Propitiate?” Roald suggested.

 

            “... That, sir.” Jesslaw cleared his throat. “Of the most high-ranking officers – Lord Raoul is delighted, Deputy Commander Evin is confused, my lord Wyldon is pleased, General Vanget... isn’t.”

 

            “I see.” Roald sat and thought for a minute. “Thank you, Squire Owen; it’s much appreciated.”

 

            Jesslaw looked unspeakably relieved, and then the ripples of remembering his duty passed across the untroubled fishpond of his face. Roald sincerely hoped the boy never had to deal with a real moral dilemma; the resulting facial contortions would be like loosing a shark in a bucket of squid. “Your highness, what about General Vanget’s dinner? I mean, um.”

 

            “Send my compliments and thanks for the invitation,” Roald said absently, “and I will of course be attending.”

 

            Jesslaw got up, bowed, and then fled.

 

            Roald tapped his fingers on the scarred wood of the desk for a moment, then cleared the dried ink off his pen on a corner of his breeches pocket and returned to his letter to Shinko.

_Shinko, something has just happened that I think will amuse you. You have probably not yet been told tales of Mistress Kourrem bint Kemail, a wander-mage of the Bloody Hawk tribe of the Bazhir and one of my father’s most loyal vassals (I do not think anyone has ever dared to call her ‘subject’ to her face) if one of the most unpredictable..._

 

            An hour later, the bell rang for a half-hour before dinner, and Roald twitched and almost spilled the contents of his inkwell over his letter – which would be a nuisance, given that it now covered five closely written pages. He closed hurriedly ( _yours always, Roald) _and folded the letter into a neat packet marked for the attention of Her Most Serene Highness the Princess Shinkokami, and sealed with two large dollops of wax and Roald’s personal signet. He paused for a moment, pen hovering with the word EXPRESS at its tip, and then dried the pen and inkwell, capped the ink-bottle and regretfully set the letter aside. It would be inappropriate for his love-letters - Roald felt a faint tingle at his fingertips and in the pit of his stomach when he realised that that was, in fact, what they were; he had never expected to be able to write such letters, at least, not openly, and certainly not to his betrothed - to go by the express messenger service intended for vital orders and information.

 

            That didn’t mean he wasn’t _tempted_ , though, Roald thought viciously, and occupied himself by changing for dinner with combined haste and meticulousness. Of course, he would never hear a word of it if he was late, but that, too, would be inappropriate. And Roald suspected that Mistress Kourrem would have silent ways to express her displeasure.

 

            Giantkiller being only a border fort, Roald could get away with warm and robust woollen breeches, shirt and tunic, rather than tunic and hose – even if the shirt was linen and embroidered with thin blue and silver bands at collar and cuffs, the boots polished until some unfortunate standard-bearer could see his own face in them, and the tunic and breeches made of finer fabric than Giantkiller generally saw and trimmed with a double band of silver braid. He splashed his face hastily, dug a small amount of dirt from under his nails with the point of a dagger, shaved away a five o’clock shadow with more caution and the aid of a small bobbing light of blue Gift which made him look anaemic, and combed his hair. Squinting at himself in a small square of looking-glass, he decided that he was presentable, and hurried out of the knights’ barracks in which (at his own insistence) he had been housed, and along the side of the parade-ground to the headquarters and General Vanget’s private rooms.

 

            Roald was not late. He was, in fact, moderately early; only Lord Wyldon, being a stickler for punctuality, Mistress Kourrem, being a terrifying harpy of whom anything might be believed, and General Vanget, being present in those rooms on a semi-permanent basis, were there. Lord Wyldon had possessed himself of a glass of wine; General Vanget was working his way down a tumbler of brandy with agonising slowness. Mistress Kourrem appeared to be abstaining. As Roald entered, there was a brief flurry as Vanget and Wyldon both bowed slightly, showing proper respect to the heir-apparent, while the heir-apparent returned this respect with an equally slight and courteous bow. Mistress Kourrem did not stand and curtsey, but treated Roald to a gracious and dignified nod of the head.

 

            Roald was not remotely surprised; if palace legend were true, Mistress Kourrem had only once curtseyed to his father, and it wasn’t even at his coronation. Lord Wyldon merely looked a little stonier. General Vanget, however –

 

            Roald decided that the atmosphere could quite reasonably be cut with a knife, and also that he ought to change the subject. “Mistress Kemail. May I be permitted to convey my parents’ respects, and their pleasure in your safe arrival?”

 

            Mistress Kourrem’s dark eyes glittered appreciatively. “You may, your highness. Truth be told, there was little difficulty given the time of year and the current conflict; only a minor party of skirmishers.”

 

            “Minor party of- Mistress Kemail, this was not mentioned in your official report!” General Vanget exploded.

 

            “Considering,” Mistress Kourrem said with a sort of cold sweetness Roald had last heard from his sister Lianne taking Doanna of Fenrigh down a peg or six, “that all I had to do was maim one or two of them, dispose of their leader, and strongly recommend to their shaman that she remove herself from the vicinity, I did not think it was a matter of sufficient importance to repeat. Particularly given that the incident took place some distance from Fort Northwatch, and the closest authority to report it to would have been Lady Knight Keladry, who I understand is perfectly well occupied without worrying about a band of raiders who are no longer a problem.”

 

            “This is true,” Lord Wyldon said, dry as dust, “but I think I speak for General Vanget as well as myself, Mistress Kemail, when I say that information on raiders’ movements is always of interest.”

 

            “In that case, Lord Wyldon,” Mistress Kourrem said, “I would be delighted to inform you that Thora Erikasdóttir and twenty men in her thrall have moved to the other side of the Vassa, effective as of two days ago, and there they intend to stay for at least the rest of the war. Or until Thora feels she can safely disregard my warnings. Whichever comes sooner.”

 

            There was a kerfuffle in the hallway outside, and Jesslaw ushered in Roald’s cousin Faleron, Deputy Commander Larse, Sir Sacherell, Lord Raoul and Sir Zahir with all his customary grace, and helped Roald to a goblet of wine much less clumsily than he might have done. This did not change the fact that he ought to have done it five minutes ago, but Jesslaw wasn’t Kel or Neal, and his understanding of protocol was commensurately more limited. Roald gave him a smile and murmured thanks anyway. Greetings and introductions took place, all of which were largely standard except that Lord Raoul had grabbed both Mistress Kourrem’s hands and shaken them firmly while telling her off for riding through a warzone without an escort, and that Sir Zahir had eschewed the usual bow, instead touching his folded hands to heart, lips and brow before delivering a courtly greeting in Bazhir.

 

            Roald looked forward to an unusual meal with extreme misgiving, and was very glad when Faleron sat down beside him, and Zahir opposite; Fal was always to be relied on. “Difficult?” Fal murmured sympathetically. “Zahir says Mistress Kemail is a lady of Strong Views and Much Learning.”

 

            A lesser prince would have flinched at the capital letters, which Fal pronounced with great relish; Roald did not twitch. If Fal had a flaw, it was the fact that he really, really liked to see the cat put amongst the pigeons, and by this time Roald was used to him. “Vanget can’t stand her. Zahir’s not Bloody Hawk, though, is he?”

 

            “A distant cousin by marriage only, Prince Roald,” Zahir murmured, thus making it clear that they were noisy, clumping northerners, and anyone with the true delicacy and keenness of Bazhir hearing – or, like Sir Sacherell, a habit of eavesdropping – could hear every word they said.

 

            Roald took the warning to heart, but also flicked Zahir a mildly irritated glance. He liked his father’s former squire on a personal level, and admired and respected him on almost every count except for his unfortunate pagehood friendships. He was reasonably certain that Zahir had decided, after much deliberation and careful thought, to give Roald his personal support. He was absolutely certain that he’d told Zahir to use his proper name more than three years ago. “Zahir, please.” 

 

            “We’re in for a cold snap, my lords,” Sir Sacherell announced cheerfully, taking his seat at the table hurriedly turned from a council-of-war table into a dining table and successfully distracting everyone. “It’s chilly enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey out there. What with the mud from last week’s rains, the Scanrans will have to skate to us.”

 

            “Yes, and our horses won’t be able to get out of the stables,” Lord Wyldon said grimly, and then added politely, “I do not, of course, refer to the Riders’ ponies, but the warhorses...”

 

            “No,” Deputy Commander Larse agreed. “Bred for weather like this, but not for great cavalry charges, I’m afraid.”

 

            “Strong animals,” Mistress Kourrem said with approval, “and intelligent. I prefer Bazhir horses, of course; but I have ridden such ponies before and I like them. There are few breeds that acquit themselves better on rough terrain.”

 

            “I noticed your mare in the stables,” Lord Wyldon remarked. “A lovely creature. Not, I think, pure-bred Bazhir?”

 

            “Well observed, my lord,” Mistress Kourrem began, with a note of interest in her voice. She, Lord Wyldon, and Lord Raoul promptly descended into an extensive discussion of the mare Atiya’s bloodlines, with occasional brief reference to Zahir, whose father had apparently bred Atiya’s dam, and Roald himself, who was surprised to learn that Atiya descended from his father’s favourite warhorse Darkness. The conversation swept away from dangerous territory like wars, warzones and Scanran raiders, and anchored itself solidly in horse-breeding.

 

             Fal breathed a sigh of relief. Roald didn’t have that luxury, but spared a moment to be grateful for the few conversational graces Lord Wyldon possessed, which included the ability to steer any discussion onto safe ground provided the other players in the conversation were interested in horses, dogs or military history. He allowed himself to fall out of his own quiet conversation with Zahir and Fal for a moment, something he never could have done at an official court banquet or any larger gathering than this, and kept one eye on Mistress Kourrem as Jesslaw and a standard-bearer served the first course. The standard-bearer was doing a much better job of it than Jesslaw.

 

            Mistress Kourrem was only five or six years younger than Sir Sacherell, perhaps in her mid-thirties. A small, fine-boned woman with a sharply carved nose and mouth, strong, sharply defined eyebrows, and fine lines at the corners of her large dark eyes, she looked as if the fierce Scanran gales had blasted her back to her bones, smoothed and streamlined her like glass running with the tide until all extraneous matter had been scythed away and she bore more resemblance to a well-sharpened blade than a human being. She wore a dark red dress with full sleeves trimmed with amber ribbon and an old-fashioned rigid bodice; if there was a film of thinner lawn or gauze reaching from the top edge of the bodice to her neck, Roald couldn’t see it, for she also wore a dark red silken scarf edged with the same amber ribbon covering her hair, the folds of which fell across her shoulders. A brooch of amber and garnets was pinned to her bodice.

 

            She looked intimidating. Sir Sacherell didn’t appear worried, but then, Aunt Alanna referred to Sacherell – not always affectionately – as a complete idiot and total bumbler without the sense of self-preservation the Goddess gave a squirrel.

 

            Roald finished his soup without really tasting it, savoured a final morsel of bread, and reserved judgement.

 

            “Roald? _Roald_ ,” Fal said, and Roald realised his cousin had been trying to attract his attention for a while.

 

            “I’m sorry, my mind was wandering...”

 

            “No matter,” Fal said impatiently. “Have you heard from Kel lately? I’ve had nothing but two or three lines from Neal. He says they’ve had killing devices, if you can believe it – at a _refugee camp_ –”

 

            “It is vulnerably positioned,” Zahir said neutrally.

 

            “There is a horrible sort of logic to the killing devices attacking Haven,” Roald pointed out. “Killing devices have the voices of children when they are destroyed. Thom tells me they’re driven by the spirits of children. Where else but Haven could you find so many children in one place?”

 

            Fal went grey-faced and drew the sign of evil on his chest. Roald tightened his lips, but refrained.

 

            “If anyone can hold back repeated assaults with few resources,” Zahir said, in a tone of strictest blandness and neutrality, “it will be Keladry.”

 

            Fal and Roald both blinked at him in astonishment. Zahir looked a little defensive.

 

            “True,” Fal said slowly, “but...”

 

            “Sarrasri’s not very _reliable_ , is she?” said General Vanget’s booming voice from the other end of the table, and all three young knights were distracted.

 

            Roald cast a quick, assessing look up the table. Deputy Commander Larse had pasted an exceptionally silly Player’s mask to his face, presumably to hide his displeasure; Roald remembered that Daine was a personal friend of his. Lord Wyldon looked stony, Sir Sacherell puzzled. Jesslaw had almost dropped a platter on hearing the comment, and – most worryingly of all – Mistress Kemail’s sharp-lined face had settled into a perfect textbook example of disapproval.

 

            Roald was not best pleased with Vanget’s comment himself, and wondered if he could get in a quick comment that would be bland enough to make it clear that he was only _Sir_ Roald while reminding everyone that he was also, in fact, _Prince_ Roald, and that Veralidaine Sarrasri had been a good friend to him in years gone by. Preferably before Mistress Kemail said anything lethal in defence of a fellow female mage.

 

            Lord Raoul beat them both to it. “Daine’s information is valuable, clear and comprehensive, Vanget,” he objected. “She’s irreplaceable. And she’s never failed an assignment Myles has set her yet.”

 

            “She has scruples,” General Vanget said flatly. “Spies shouldn’t.”

 

            “Mages must,” Mistress Kourrem said, equally flatly. “Without scruples, what is there to stop us bringing the world down around your ears?”

 

            Roald very nearly winced. General Vanget went puce.

 

            “A sense of _duty_ , mistress, if you understand the word.”

 

            Zahir sat up a trifle straighter, face impassive with something unpleasant hiding at the corners of it, and Roald recalled that one of the lies often told about the Bazhir was that they would break any oath to their northern countrymen without thinking twice.

 

            “Precisely. Scruples,” Mistress Kourrem said, with a hard smile and a dangerous glitter in her eyes.

 

            Vanget sat back in his seat. It was possible, but unlikely, that he realised he had now managed to offend everyone in the room, as opposed to just Daine’s closer friends. “My quarrel with Sarrasri isn’t her devotion to duty, anyway; I’m prepared to admit she does her work well.” (Roald doubted that.) “It’s that she has no sense of strategy. I can’t be worrying about a pack of commoners here and there when I have Scanran troop movements to counter.” Vanget huffed, mishandled his knife and fork in a fit of pique, and sent a slice of duck in plum sauce flying into his lap. “I suppose she has some fellow feeling.”

 

            Momentarily, Larse’s Player’s smile fell off his face and was replaced by a look of narrow-eyed dislike. Lord Raoul shifted in his seat, the Player’s smile reassembled itself, and Roald mentally filled in the brisk kick to the shin Larse must have received.

 

            “I imagine,” Lord Wyldon said rather coldly, his excellent table-manners highlighting Vanget’s shortcomings, “that being rather more acquainted than most nobles with the human impact of food shortages and banditry on the common people, Mistress Sarrasri seeks to bring it to your attention before it becomes a full-scale famine – and therefore another strategic problem to counter.” 

 

            “Lord Wyldon makes an excellent point,” Mistress Kourrem agreed unnecessarily.

 

            General Vanget began to redden around the ears again, but was thankfully distracted by Jesslaw whisking his plate from under his nose. Roald, fearing a relapse as soon as Jesslaw had staggered out the door with more plates than he could really see over, began a loud conversation with Fal and Zahir about the weather.

 

 

            The rest of dinner passed unremarkably; the few jabs General Vanget got in at Mistress Kourrem were largely parried by Lord Raoul, who appeared to be treading on her feet at regular intervals to prevent her from answering back and souring her reputation with the general even further, and once or twice Lord Wyldon. On one occasion, Zahir raised his head in answer to an aside themed around Mistress Kourrem’s status as a Bazhir, and Vanget stopped cold, perhaps remembering that Mistress Kourrem wasn’t the only Bazhir at the table – wasn’t even the only Bazhir at the table with royal favour. Still, they got through the dinner with only a few more conversational disasters to harrow Roald’s feelings, and eventually a decanter of port appeared and Mistress Kourrem excused herself on the grounds that she had promised Duke Baird she would spend the last half of his shift going over the infirmary’s workings, while Lord Raoul said he had supply details to straighten out.

 

            Roald wondered both whether Duke Baird had extracted any such promise and whether General Vanget had forgotten that Lord Raoul didn’t drink anything stronger than hot cider and hated to have alcohol waved under his nose, but rose to bow as all the others did at Mistress Kourrem’s and Lord Raoul’s leaving.

 

            “Bloody woman,” General Vanget said, when the door had hardly swung shut. “Gods only know why their M- Lady Fortune saw fit to inflict her on me. Can’t stand her. Never have done. Always was an uppity little thing, even when she was only Baird’s student.”

 

            “I find her proud,” Lord Wyldon said, “but not disagreeable.”

 

            “She’s useful,” Sir Sacherell said, with unusual bluntness for a relatively low-ranking knight. Roald asked himself who Sir Sacherell reported to; it didn’t seem to be General Vanget. “She hears and sees things that other people don’t. She’s spent more time in the Copper Isles and Scanra over the past three years than she has in Tortall, and she tells what she hears and what she learns. Before Emperor Ozorne fell and Carthak allied with us, there were few people with a better knowledge of grassroots Carthak – I don’t mean the city itself, but the coasts, where the pirates come from.”

 

            Vanget snorted. “That’s as may be, Wellam. But why have I been told to have all mages report to her as soon as possible?”

 

            “Probably to arrange some teaching,” Sir Sacherell said, with a shrug. “Mistress Kemail has a funny way of learning all the little tips and tricks foreign mages wouldn’t tell white Tortallans with Corus accents, and the Scanran shamans’ singing magics are a plague and a torment to our lines, sir. The men fear them only slightly less than the killing devices. It’s no fun to be blinded in battle.”

 

            “She’s got no reason to tell what she learns. How do we know she isn’t holding back?”

 

            Roald decided it was time to say something. “Sir - I was once told by someone that knows Mistress Kemail well that her loyalty is not rooted in mercenary considerations, but in her personal opinions. She is loyal to those she likes, admires or respects.”

 

            “Of course, Conté,” Vanget said gruffly. “She has a personal connection to your family, doesn’t she?”

 

            “She cared for my grandmother in her last illness, and supported my father during the period before his coronation,” Roald agreed. “She also fought at the Battle of the Hall of Crowns.”

 

            Lord Wyldon gave him a sharp look down the table. Roald let it slide off him, and watched his barb sink home in General Vanget’s thick skin. Fal, Zahir and Larse would not know, and Sir Sacherell had probably chosen not to remember, that the Minchis had dragged their feet over recognising a younger Jonathan as King.  

 

            “I am also told,” he said, letting a hint of rueful respect slip into his voice, the same way the better knights Kel had bested as a squire had spoken of her ability to pop a man out of his saddle and dump him on the floor, “that she has a very _challenging_ personality. Difficult to get along with.”

 

            General Vanget harrumphed his way back onto an even keel and the assumption that the heir to the throne had not just made tacit reference to one of the ha Minch family’s less honourable episodes. “Hardly as if I care, eh? Provided she follows orders. She’s Duke Baird’s problem now.”

 

            Roald smiled blandly, and endured the twin fishy looks he was getting from Zahir and Lord Wyldon. He very much doubted that General Vanget’s confident assertion would come true, but immediate disaster – or at least, unpardonable rudeness - been averted.

 

***

 

            The battle came mere days after Lord Raoul had left, taken Third Company and moved on, and Lord Wyldon had returned to Mastiff. Roald, on the walls and blinking in the dusk-light, saw the glitter of steel creeping at the treeline, and sounded the alarm along with three others, and then movement became giants and killing devices, a tide of Scanrans sweeping around them in battle-order as they  and everything started to move very quickly. Roald ran off the walls in search of armour and bow, knowing that he wouldn’t be allowed to ride out, but hoping that he might perhaps get to be of _some_ use –

 

            “Easy, your royal highness, easy,” said Quartermaster Walsh’s placid voice, and his iron hand on Roald’s shoulder drew him into headquarters, into a small and well-defended room.

 

            Roald spat with fury and swore.

 

            “Image of your father thirty years ago, you are,” the Quartermaster said indulgently, “in the Tusaini war. And if he weren’t gods-touched, Mithros bless His Majesty, we’d have lost him then.”

 

            Roald stared coldly at him. “So I’m to sit here while others fight and die for me, because my father was a hothead when he was young?”

 

            “For you, sir? For Tortall.”

 

            “Tortall is as much my home as theirs!”

 

            “And what would your good lady say if we lost you now?” the Quartermaster added, apparently heedless.

 

            “Shinko understands,” Roald snapped, and paced the room like a trapped tiger.

 

             The Quartermaster sat and watched him for a while, then sighed. “Do you mind if I remove my leg, your highness? I could stand to get a bit of air on the stump, like.”

 

            “Do as you please,” Roald said bitterly.

 

            The Quartermaster raised an eyebrow, removed his wooden left leg, and settled to some accounts that wouldn’t do themselves. Roald paced for a little while longer, then stopped short and sighed.

 

            “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t snap at you.”

 

            “Better me, sir,” the Quartermaster said precisely, doing sums on a slate, “than the likes of Squire Owen, who’ll think he’s about to be hauled off to Traitor’s Hill if you so much as poke him.”

 

            Roald laughed shortly, unwillingly. “Owen? Owen would be helping me break out of here and declaring it wasn’t very jolly of my lord Wyldon not to let him fight. Mithros, he was a terror as a page...”

                       

            “Tell me, sir,” the Quartermaster invited. “I always like to have a little blackmail on side, and Squire Owen _is_ a holy terror. I’m wishful of keeping him under my thumb _somehow_ , but the lad bounces and wriggles his way out of just about anything, and every time I try to put the fear of the gods in him Lord Wyldon whisks him back off to Fort Mastiff again.”

 

            Roald laughed again, and thought for a moment, raking up the most embarrassing yet harmless of Owen’s misdeeds he could remember. “Well... have you heard about the time he got lost running errands and was left behind by the Royal Progress?”

           

            “No.” The Quartermaster grinned. “Say on, Prince Roald. The time goes faster with stories.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

            Roald was, at least, allowed into the infirmary (after the battle was over, and the Scanrans chased away). They claimed to be glad of extra hands, and Roald worked tirelessly to try to make up for the fact that General Vanget kept him off everything but brief spells of sentry duty. He cleaned wounds and healed snapped bones and held men down while poppy juice took effect, sluiced down bloody floors and scrubbed operating tables clean as fast as the surgeons could dirty them. He took work off people’s hands, high-handed in a way he never was elsewhere, because he was desperate for something to do.

 

            Hours later, when all the field healers who fought alongside the Own and the Riders had been sent away to sleep, all the patients settled or their way to the Black God’s embrace eased, and the infirmary rested in an uneasy pre-dawn quiet and greyness, Roald still stalked the infirmary’s corridors. He took care to walk softly, placing his feet with caution and modulating the glow of his blue witchlight so as not to wake the sleeping patients, and paused by every bedside to check the well-being of those laying there. He cooled a rising fever or two, replaced several drained cups of water, and woke a young fair-haired Rider who couldn’t be much more than sixteen from a screaming nightmare. He had an extended philosophical discussion with Squire Warric, who wasn’t as jolly as his cousin and had been badly rattled by his first real action, which had ended with a head injury which wasn’t life-threatening but meant they couldn’t dose him with poppy to ease the ache or send him to sleep. He helped a drummer-boy struck down by sickness from a shaman’s ill-luck spell throw up into a bucket, wiped his forehead and mouth and held him while he wept despairingly.

 

            And all the while, Roald buzzed with a frantic energy and a sneaking wish that a real emergency would come to pass, just so he could do something real and important rather than be stuck on the sidelines.

 

            On his rounds, he passed Mistress Kourrem and Duke Baird’s offices a hundred times – side by side, so people could find the camp’s two strongest mages easily. Both mages slept in small rooms attached to their offices, but a light only shone in one: Mistress Kourrem’s. As Roald walked past her door and the crack of light shining from beneath it for the hundred and first time, it opened, and a figure appeared in it, arms crossed and eyebrow raised menacingly.

 

            “And just what do you think you’re doing, up this late?” Mistress Kourrem demanded.

 

            Not unnaturally, Roald came to the conclusion that she hadn’t recognised him, and turned, drawing his witchlight up so that the blue glow lit his face more clearly. “Good evening, Mistress Kemail.”

 

            “I know exactly who you are, Prince Roald,” Mistress Kourrem said. “I also know you were _not_ assigned the early morning shift. You are every bit as bad as your parents.” She examined him and shook her head. “Come in and have a cup of tea.”  


            “I have rounds –”

 

            “Fenrigh is also making rounds, and is perfectly capable of calling for help, should he require it. Moreover, he is supposed to be on duty. You were meant to leave at midnight, young man.”

 

            Roald hesitated, torn between insult and an instinct to tell Mistress Kourrem why he spent so long in the infirmary.

 

            Mistress Kourrem gestured impatiently. “Come and cheer an elderly woman’s declining hours.”

 

            Roald suspected that to Mistress Kourrem referring to herself as ‘elderly’ was much like Aunt Alanna referring to herself, among personal friends, as ‘feeble, these days’: personal exaggeration, intended to confuse the issue. Still, there was no polite way to refuse, so he entered the office and let the door swing softly shut behind him.

 

            Mistress Kourrem was significantly less senior than Duke Baird, and her office was accordingly smaller and more cramped. It was also very plain, with the air of a room which its occupant could pack up and leave in minutes, although the few personal touches – worn leather-bound editions of medical textbooks in several languages, a heavy, ornate inkbottle in the Carthaki style, a tiny Yamani lucky cat like the one Shinko had given him before he came away to war, a small, bright tapestry on a common Copper Isles theme, the return of the Trickster and his queen – were tasteful and interesting. The door to the sleeping-room next door was firmly closed and so heavily warded, it made Roald’s eyes hurt to look at it.

 

            Mistress Kourrem poked up the brazier in a corner of the office, and set a kettle on the glowing embers. “Sit, please.”

 

            Roald assessed the two chairs and chose the one that looked least likely to belong to Mistress Kourrem.

 

            “Now,” Mistress Kourrem said briskly, “I’m not sure how well you know me, or how much you know of me.” She took down a set of tea-cups and a teapot, not fine ware but brightly painted – more Copper Isles work, if Roald was any judge, though the kettle was Scanran make – and a heavy glass jar of tea-leaves, also Scanran by the runes stamped onto the translucent green glass. “Your father has the most inconvenient habit of holding back crucial pieces of information. He’s always been like that. Your mother has broken him of the worst of it, Goddess be thanked, but I fear the rest is entrenched.” She glared at the kettle, which obediently boiled just as she was spooning tea-leaves neatly into the pot; she wrapped her sleeve around her hand and poured hot water from the kettle into the pot. A rich, spicy smell rose from it. “And the last time I was in Corus – when was I last in Corus?”

 

            “Six years ago, mistress.”

 

            Mistress Kourrem frowned. “Sooner than that, surely? Never mind. We met then, but you were quite young. And of course, the first time I met you you were mere moments old, and not in a position to become acquainted with me.” She gave him a measuring look. “Do you still like rose-flavoured sweets?”

 

            It was a question for a child. Roald flushed. “I thank you, mistress, yes. But I buy them for myself these days.”

 

            “Of course,” Mistress Kourrem said, unruffled. “They aren’t for sale in Scanra, anyway. A nasty-minded people. I don’t recommend them.”

 

            “Sir Sacherell said you’d been living among them,” Roald pointed out.

 

            “Yes,” Mistress Kourrem said. “As the result of a misapprehension, at first, and then... for interest if not liking. I like Gallans; I’ve spent a lot of time among Gallans. I was told Scanrans were more of the same, so I thought I might have a little look round, but no – sickness-riddled, rocky, poor country, badly ruled, scrabbling for everything it can get, and I have not got the _words_ to tell you how wretched the infrastructure. I would not have stayed, but I was hunting information on the killing devices and the singing and whistle magics they prize so highly.” She poured the brewed tea into cups, and offered him one. “The tea is from the Copper Isles, by way of a particularly displeasing Scanran pirate captain. I paid him for the tea and my passage into Tortall and sank his boat, much good may it do him. Miserable man. Decent sailors should not allow pirates to pose as ferrymen.”

 

            Against his will, Roald grinned. Neither Jonathan nor Thayet had ever warned him about the unique nature of Kourrem’s personality, which appeared to consist of barrelling through problems she could not skirt round. She reminded him of Aunt Buri, if Aunt Buri were haughtier. “Have you spent a lot of time in the Copper Isles as well, mistress?”

 

            “Yes. Some years more than in Scanra, on and off. Pleasant people with a very interesting underground culture of magecraft they call raka magic, but the rulers are mad and the laws unjust.” Mistress Kourrem pressed her lips together. “Just now the Copper Isles are more trouble than they’re worth. If I were you, Prince Roald, I should look for regime change there in a few years. The people won’t stand much more and the king’s power is too weak to hold them down.”

 

            “Please call me Roald,” Roald said, sipping the tea, which was excellent. His eyelids had been drooping; after a few sips he felt more awake and alert than he had done since he sat down.

 

            “In which case, you must certainly call me Kourrem,” Mistress Kourrem allowed graciously.

 

            Roald immediately resolved to do nothing of the sort.

 

            There was a brief, comfortable silence in which Mistress Kourrem prodded the brazier and put the kettle on to boil again, and Roald let his eyes wander around the room. A healer’s grab-bag sat tucked against the wall, and a heavy canvas apron on a hook.

           

            “So enlighten me, Roald. What precisely is a trained knight doing, stamping up and down the halls of my infirmary when he ought by rights to be in bed, sleeping off a day’s battle?”

 

            Roald almost dropped his teacup. The trap had closed so swiftly around him, he had barely noticed. “It’s not my place to complain about my orders.”

 

            “Ah. More wrongdoing to be laid at the door of the inestimable Vanget, then,” Mistress Kourrem said dryly. “Does he not know how many brothers and sisters you have? It is not as if you are a sole heir, like your father – and your father, if memory serves me, rode into battle regardless.”

 

            “There were no giants in the Tusaini war,” Roald said with a certain amount of regret. “No Immortals at all, and no killing devices.”

 

            Mistress Kourrem sniffed. “A valid point.”

 

            Roald nodded. “I suppose, from a strategist’s point of view, I’m a liability. The Crown Prince in reach of the Scanrans? Even the strongest forts may fall. I’m lucky to be as close to the front lines as I am.” The old conciliatory words almost choked him as they rolled out of his mouth, and he took an overlarge gulp of the aromatic tea to make up for it.

 

            Mistress Kourrem raised an eyebrow. “I deduce that Vanget keeps you wrapped in lambswool.”

 

            “No,” Roald protested.

 

            The eyebrow inched further up Mistress Kourrem’s face, threatening to vanish beneath the top edge of her dark purple headscarf and into her hairline.

 

            “... Yes,” Roald conceded, the shame of it rising in his throat and making his eyes prickle like smoke caught on the breeze. He was no longer surprised – if he ever had been – that Mistress Kourrem had been once been one of his father’s most trusted cronies. He thought she could probably thumbscrew a straight answer out of Uncle Gary.

 

             “More fool General Vanget,” Mistress Kourrem said evenly. “We shall have to find something for you to do, Roald, I cannot have you cluttering up the infirmary. You will trip up Duke Baird, and the gods alone know he gets enough of that from his son.”

           

            “Oh. Neal,” Roald said, and smiled. He missed Neal’s sense of humour and complete inability to let a thing that was irritating him go, although – to be completely fair – if Neal was present, he would also miss Kel or Neal’s fiancée Yukimi’s ability to keep him in check. “You know him, too?”

 

            “Yes.” An unwilling smile twitched at the corner of Mistress Kourrem’s mouth. “He spent a good deal of time getting under my feet when I was studying in Corus. Of course, his brothers did too – but Neal has always been a very special sort of nuisance. I visited Queenscove two years ago, and was surprised to find him so tall. And such a _terrible_ poet.”

 

            Roald burst out laughing, but quickly toned it down, so as not to wake Duke Baird.

           

            “That’s better,” Mistress Kourrem said with considerable satisfaction. “I thought you still had a sense of humour, hidden away in there somewhere. Have you finished your tea?”

 

            Roald looked down at his cup. “Yes, thank you.”

 

            “No call to thank me. Go and get some sleep, Roald, and we shall see what I can do about your lamentable underemployment.” Mistress Kourrem stood and started to pack away the unused teacups, an obvious dismissal. “Good night.”

 

            “Good night, Mistress Kourrem,” Roald echoed, and bowed politely, a little deeper than was really necessary for even a distinguished commoner mage; he thought Mistress Kourrem might appreciate the courtesy. Mistress Kourrem nodded at him with dignity, hiding a smile in the corner of her mouth.

           

            He left, and slept better than he had for weeks, only waking at the sound of the army’s trumpeters blowing reveille. As he dressed and hurried down to breakfast in the officers’ mess, he wondered if it had something to do with the tea, but dismissed the idea as he sat down beside a very sleepy Fal and registered the fact that there was a sealed note addressed to him sitting on his empty plate.

 

            Roald stared at it, and after a moment worked out that the handwriting belonged to Vanget, not Shinko or any of his family, and that this was backed up by the wax seal stamped with the Minchi sign of a burning pine-tree on the reverse. He cracked open the note, and found himself bidden to attend a meeting with General Vanget at his earliest convenience, to discuss his current role in the defence of Northwatch. He grinned. Mistress Kourrem certainly worked fast.

 

            Fal, shamelessly reading over his shoulder, gave him a questioning look.

 

            “Nothing of importance,” Roald told his cousin repressively, folded up the note, and tucked it into his pocket.

 

***

 

            The Lioness caused significantly more stir when she arrived than Mistress Kourrem had, even though (unlike Mistress Kourrem) she’d been expected, and (also unlike Mistress Kourrem) she was someone General Vanget needed to be relatively polite to, so couldn’t provoke. When she and five squads of First Company appeared, Roald was working through an inventory with Mistress Kourrem and Duke Baird, wallowing in sterilised bandages, curved suture needles, lengths of sterilised black thread for stitches, scalpels and saws, tightly stoppered jars of herbs, gauze bags containing ready-made teas that only needed to be flung into boiling water, oils, and sundry other necessities for a well-run field hospital that made his head spin. The horn-call went up that friends had been spotted on the road, and Roald, standing on a stool to reach the highest-placed items, wobbled hopelessly.

 

            “Steady, lad,” Duke Baird said absently, and took a chest of glassware for making up more complicated tinctures from him. “Go and see who it is.”

 

            Roald climbed down from his perch and went out onto the parade-ground around which Northwatch was arranged, where he collared Squire Warric. “Who’s coming in?”

 

            “It’s the Lioness, Prince Roald,” Squire Warric said, after making a small _hngk_ noise occasioned by the fact that in order to stop him, Roald had had literally grabbed him by the collar. “The Lioness and five squads of the King’s Own!”

 

            “Exciting,” Roald said politely, and let Squire Warric go. “Thanks, squire.”  


            “Not at all, sir,” Squire Warric said, and dashed off.

 

            Roald made his way back to the infirmary without undue haste, and re-entered the store-room. “It’s the Lioness,” he relayed, “plus fifty men of the Own.” 

 

            “Good news,” Duke Baird commented. “Roald, is that another two bottles of disinfecting alcohol or another four?”

 

            Roald eyed the heavy ceramic jars, tightly stoppered and warded; soldiers would get into any alcohol if they could, never mind that a gulp of disinfecting alcohol would probably kill them. They were tightly crammed into a corner of the highest shelf, and he couldn’t quite make out how many of them there were, either – or how full they were. “Shall I get them down, sir?”

 

            “Please do,” Duke Baird said with immense cordiality, and Roald sighed internally and hopped back onto the stool.

 

            “The next thing I requisition,” Mistress Kourrem said, turning her head from her carefully made-out inventory, “will definitely be a stepladder.” She was taking the notes, her handwriting being easily better than Duke Baird’s or Roald’s own, on account of years of writing extensive letters which needed to be readable and which contained instructions on spells and information on glamours and magics that had to be crystal clear.

 

            “Much appreciated, ma’am,” Roald said, wobbling on the stool; the jars held four gallons each, and were extremely heavy and unmanageable. Also, he ought to jam a bit of wood shaving or cloth or something under the stool, it was –

 

            “Kourrem!” Aunt Alanna shouted at quite close range, and Roald gave an unmanly yelp and fell backwards off the stool.

 

            He didn’t fall very far; three spells shot out to catch him. Still, Roald thought, flat on his back in midair with a jar of disinfecting alcohol clasped to his chest, he would prefer not to repeat the experience. Or, for that matter, to have had it in the first place.

 

            Aunt Alanna, whose reflexes appeared to have won out, lowered him gently to the floor. “Roald, what in the name of the Goddess are you _doing_?” she demanded less gently. “I thought Vanget was determined to keep you out of trouble!”

 

            Roald winced.

 

            “We’re putting him to work,” Mistress Kourrem said briskly, melting a lump of candlewax onto the offending leg until the stool sat evenly. “I cannot have him stalking the halls of the infirmary at unholy hours of the night, snapping at people, looking for something to heal or another floor to swab, because he is so bored. I draw the line at allowing princes to become bored, Alanna, I consider it detrimental to their moral fibre and dangerous for everyone around them. Moreover, Roald would not be in any danger if the quartermasters would supply us with a stepladder.”

 

            “Nice to see you too, Kourrem,” Aunt Alanna commented, grinning, and won a slight curve of the lips from Mistress Kourrem’s cold face. “Baird! I am glad to see you. Have you heard from your scapegrace son lately?”

 

            “He writes occasionally. Yuki this, Yuki that,” Duke Baird said, embracing Aunt Alanna. “And every second word that isn’t Yuki is Kel this, Kel that. You know how he gets, Alanna.”

 

            “Oh, I do. The idiot boy.”

 

            “I should like to meet Lady Yuki,” Mistress Kourrem remarked precisely to Roald. “And Sir Keladry.”

 

            “I think you’d like them both, Mistress Kourrem,” Roald said, making another attempt on the disinfecting alcohol.

 

            “Roald, get off that thing, it’s a deathtrap,” Aunt Alanna ordered. Roald sneaked a look round; she was eyeing him with unmistakable concern on her face. Just to be contrary, he climbed back onto the stool for the third bottle of disinfecting alcohol.

 

            “It is not, Alanna, I fixed it,” Mistress Kourrem said. “He will come to no significant harm. I take it that comes to twenty full bottles of disinfecting alcohol, then? Excellent. We can supply Haven, then.”

 

            “Every third word of Neal’s letters being things he hasn’t got and wants, of course,” Duke Baird explained to Aunt Alanna.

 

            Aunt Alanna snorted. “No sympathy. Neal’s a perfectionist. He can almost certainly do the job with what he has.”

 

            “I am surprised,” Mistress Kourrem said, dry as dust. “He showed no signs of it as a child.”

 

            “We all change,” Duke Baird said comfortably. “I remember when you had more of a temper, Alanna – and when you had less of one, Kourrem.”

 

            Aunt Alanna laughed, famous violet eyes glittering, but Mistress Kourrem merely sniffed. “I was young and naive.”

 

            “Young yes,” Aunt Alanna said, looking at Mistress Kourrem with unmistakable affection. “Naive never, except maybe in your cradle.”   

 

            “You still are young, you pair of whippersnappers,” Duke Baird said pointedly. “To say nothing of the babe in arms over there. Roald, come down from your ivory tower and go and do a round of the wards before you have to take sentry duty, will you? I’m not convinced by the burns case in Bed C Sixteen. His dressings will probably need changing.”

 

            “Burns case?” Aunt Alanna said to Mistress Kourrem. “Blazebalm accident in the field?”

 

            “You give them too much credit,” Mistress Kourrem said flatly. “A cook fell into his own fire.”

 

            Aunt Alanna rolled her eyes, but said nothing more.

 

            Roald made his escape, grab-bag slung over his shoulder.

 

            “I have missed you,” he heard Mistress Kourrem admit, in a tone that was making up for sweet words by being as impersonal and awkward as possible. “It has been too long.”

 

            “Likewise,” Aunt Alanna replied, and Roald did not turn to check whether the rustling of Mistress Kourrem’s skirts and the slight clanking of the bits of Aunt Alanna’s armour she hadn’t yet removed betokened a hug. “Next time include Pirate’s Swoop in your travel itinerary.”

 

            “I have tea from the Temaida estates in the Copper Isles. If you would care to join me for a cup.”

 

            “I’d like that.”

 

            Roald fled in the direction of Bed C Sixteen, meditating on what happened when people with courage and temper and wanderlust like Aunt Alanna didn’t have lots of very close friends, no need to worry about money or employment, and a loving husband to back them up.

 

 

***

 

            “How long have you been in here?” Fal demanded, staring at Roald, who was presently cleaning and bandaging a Rider’s foot.

 

            “Four hours,” Roald said absently. “I have another two to go.” He drew a last shard of ceramic from the wound, and gently cleansed it, then slapped a dressing on and bandaged it neatly. “Get your stockings and boots back on; it should be fine now. Get your Group healer to dress it again tomorrow and go to them if it looks like getting infected. And do us all a favour and don’t tread on any more broken pots!”

 

            “Yes, your highness,” said the Rider, a nervous girl of twenty and a hardened veteran with five years’ service under her belt. “Thank you, your highness.”

 

            “You’re welcome. Now go away and take care of yourself.” Roald stood, brushing off his hands on his healer’s apron. “What was it you wanted, Fal?”

 

            “Nothing,” Fal said, a strange look on his face. “Does this make you happier?”

 

            “Significantly. You know how I hate busy work, Fal.” Roald put the grab-bag over his shoulder. “This is not what I was trained for, but it’s not busy work.”

 

            “Hmm,” Fal said dubiously.

 

            “I’m going into the amputees ward,” Roald warned him. “You can stay or go, but if I think you’re bothering them, Fal...”

 

            “You’ll send me away,” Fal completed, giving Roald another very odd look. “You’re a lot happier now, aren’t you?”

 

            Roald looked left, looked right, and pulled Fal into a storage cupboard. “Yes. I am. Will you stop looking at me like that?”

 

            “What’s the difference between what you did before and what you do now?” Fal said bluntly. “How does having official shifts in the infirmary help? It’s just what you were doing before with a red seal on it!”

 

            “No,” Roald insisted. “Under the terms of the agreement with General Vanget, I can work in here throughout battles. I don’t have to – hide away, and be protected. I can look after other people. I came here to fight and I’m not fighting, but at least I’m doing _something_ that matters.”

 

            “Have it your way,” Fal said. He looked dubious.

 

            “Thanks. I will,” Roald replied with unaccustomed firmness, and stepped out of the storage cupboard.

 

            As usual, the amputee ward was full of the silence of men who were either too drugged to know they were in pain or being excessively stoical about the pain they were in. The other healer on duty at the moment, Lan, a woman from Fief Trebond in her mid-thirties who’d been named after Alanna when she was just Miss Alanna the Lord’s daughter and carried a similar shade of red hair, had been here at least ten minutes and was changing the dressings on Bed E Two’s stump where his left hand had been. Roald nodded to both of them as the knight in the bed – maybe in his late twenties, a contemporary of Kel’s older brothers, but not someone Roald knew – gave up on the fight to stay soundless and let out a strangled whimper. The man blushed hot with shame, and Lan scolded him absently for his embarrassment; Roald came over and took his hand.

 

            “Grip, sir knight,” he said, and grinned. “You won’t break me. Go on, Healer Weaver, do your worst.”

 

            A faint blue glow pooled in the hand grasping the knight’s as Lan rolled her eyes and got back to work, and the older man perceptibly relaxed.

 

            “Mistress Kemail will kill you for overtaxing yourself,” Lan observed.

 

            “Only if she finds out,” Roald said, but made a careful note to ration how much Gift he poured into the knight. Lan was almost done, anyway.

 

            Lan finished the dressing and set the bandaged wrist gently down. “That’s the trouble with the wrist,” she murmured. “So many nerves. Painful. Well, your highness, haven’t you work to do?”

 

            “And to spare.” Roald withdrew his Gift from the man carefully, treated him to a smile and a dose of poppy juice, and went to continue his own rounds.

 

            As he worked his way down the rows of beds, he found that keeping up the bright expression on his face was increasingly hard. Every time he came in here, to see soldiers who were stable, who would live, but whose livelihoods had gone with their limbs, he pictured faces he knew on the foreshortened bodies. His brothers Liam and Jasson. His cousin Fal, and more distantly Merric. Neal. Seaver. Kel. Zahir. Cleon. Esmond. Balduin. Yancen. His Aunt Buri, his Uncle Raoul – Roald just thanked Mithros that neither his mother nor his father took the field any more. At least, not regularly – and Thayet’s Queen’s Ladies were the best bodyguard she could possibly have, particularly when augmented with deadly, focussed Yamanis who carried weapons in everything they did. Roald still remembered how Shinko’s eyes had crinkled with amusement at the look on his face when he’d lazily pulled an ornamental pin from her hair in order to let it fall loose and shining down her back, and had found himself holding a small dagger; it was the closest he’d ever brought her to laughing out loud.

 

            He reminded himself that he would have more chances to try to make that happen, unlike the Rider who’d been carried away to a rough chapel for a short vigil that morning, destined for a quiet grave and a plank for a headstone. A half-Yamani boy of fifteen with cropped hair and full lips, a trader’s son from Port Caynn, looking much younger than his age with his eyes closed in an endless sleep. Roald had looked at him and seen a child who might have been his son in twenty years’ time. He had almost been sick.

 

            “Yez don’t have to do this,” said an unexpected voice. Roald looked up sharply, and discovered that the regular army corporal from whose knee he was unwinding some bandages was staring down at him, small black eyes narrow, Port Legann accent thick enough to cut with a knife. Mistress Kourrem had frequently been tempted to try, Roald knew; the corporal was a notorious troublemaker and had unrepeatable opinions on the Bazhir.

 

            “Don’t I?” Roald said, buying time and using it to ask himself if he ought to insist on his title. On the whole, he thought not.

 

             “This?” The corporal nodded down at his leg, such of it as remained. “This’s dirty work. It’s not fit for the likes of yez.”

 

            “I’ll be the judge of that,” Roald said repressively.

 

            There was a long pause, in which Roald discovered that the wound was showing distinct signs of infection, and the corporal stared at his bent head as if it were a particularly unedifying example of a raw recruit’s staff-work.    

 

            “The men like it,” the corporal said abruptly. “That ye comes here. That ye’re not scared of what’s real, about war. That yez knows the truth, not the lies they feed boys younger’n ye so’s they’ll fight and die.”

 

            Roald felt a smile blooming on his face, and didn’t trouble to squash it.

 

           The corporal glowered at the ceiling as if embarrassed.

 

           “I have to debride the wound. This will hurt,” Roald said, changing the subject. “You can go under with the Gift or you can go under with poppy juice. Choose.”

 

***

 

            Roald supposed he could have cursed Wyldon for the fool he was, but it would have done no good, and in any case Lord Raoul had already done it. Kel was gone. Nothing to be done about that, unless it was what Neal and Seaver and Esmond and Merric and Faleron (and, Roald suspected, Jesslaw and Kel’s boy Tobe) did. And Roald could not have followed them. There would have been no quicker way to bring Vanget down on them, and then Kel’s folk would have died for sure, and maybe Roald wouldn’t have been able to save Kel herself from Traitor’s Hill.

 

            If she showed her judgement was as good as it always had been... then he could do something.

 

            Roald trusted Kel and waited and wrote a hundred scraps of letters that went unsent.

 

***

 

            “This Kel,” Mistress Kourrem said at last, in a silent midnight shift of the kind Roald liked best. Duke Baird was asleep; Roald sat on the floor of the office with a writing desk on his lap, the door wide open, waiting for Emmit of Fenrigh to come back from his round so Roald could take over.

 

            “Kel,” Roald repeated.

 

            “Will she succeed?”

 

            Mistress Kourrem’s voice was deceptively cool, and as close to dreamy as it ever came. Distant, perhaps.

 

            Roald opened his mouth and closed it again.

 

            “I will know if you lie.”

 

           “Unnecessary,” Roald said, stung.

 

           “Just spit it out without worrying if you’re spreading despondency or not.”

 

           There was a long silence.

 

           “If she doesn’t – two hundred more killing devices. That’s enough to take our army in the field. The war will be over, and Tortall will lose – or at least, be half of what it was. Most of the north will go, I think. Within three months.” Roald took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter whether or not Kel can save her people. She has to.”

 

***

           

            Kel won (over Blayce the Gallan, over Stenmun Kinslayer, over that shadow of a death on Traitor’s Hill, over all the naysayers and doubters). Neal brought her back and dragged her to the infirmary, talking a mile a minute.

 

            “Shut up and let your friend sit down, Nealan!” Mistress Kourrem ordered.

 

            Kel swayed slightly where she stood, and eyed Mistress Kourrem, perplexed.

 

            “Kourrem!” Neal cried, and swept her up in a hug. Her feet did not touch the floor, kicking crossly in midair, and Roald suddenly remembered how small Mistress Kourrem actually was.

 

            “Put me down, Queenscove! I _said_ put me down!”

 

            “Of course, my only love! Well, my almost only love. Did I tell you about Yuki? Did Father tell you about Yuki? You have to meet her. She’s amazing, she’s wonderful, she’s a gift from the gods. You’d love her. You’re both terrifying. Speaking of terrifying, this is Kel! She runs off on her own with some sparrows and a couple of dogs to rescue five hundred people. Isn’t she marvellous? And also an idiot. Plus she has a hole in her shoulder, which I think we should do something about.”

 

            “I think we should gag you, Nealan,” Mistress Kourrem said, rather pink in the face. “Perhaps tie you to a tree and leave you for the wolves for good measure. I miss the days when you were small enough to threaten with terrible fates. Go and greet your father before he has an aneurysm, sitting in his office and pretending he’s happy waiting patiently to see you.”

 

            Neal rushed towards his father’s office, and Mistress Kourrem gathered her dignity about her and gave Kel a gracious nod. “It is a pleasure to meet one who can keep that hellion under some semblance of control.”

 

            “Neal?” Kel said with a faint smile. “I don’t think anyone can keep him under control, except maybe his father. But thank you for the compliment, mistress.” She tried to bow and fell over.

 

            Roald caught her and propped her up with difficulty. Kel was slightly taller than he was, and built like a particularly solid brick wall. It was like trying to stop a miniature avalanche from crashing downhill. “Welcome back, Kel.”

 

            “Roald?” Kel said, and managed another small smile. “Good to see you.”

 

            “It’s good to see you too.” He got an arm under hers, and staggered with her into an examination room.

 

            Mistress Kourrem stepped back. “I’ll fetch a grab-bag.”

 

            “Thanks, Mistress Kourrem.” He managed to get Kel propped up against the examination couch, and between the two of them they got her sitting on it. “Now, what’s this hole in your shoulder I hear so much about?”

 

***

 

            “So it’s true,” Roald said, standing in the doorway to Mistress Kourrem’s office. “You are leaving.”

 

            “Yes.” Mistress Kourrem’s packs were full; the small personal items were vanishing, and for once the door to the bedroom was open, showing a bare room, stripped of anything revealing. Mistress Kourrem herself fixed the edge of her scarf as if she wasn’t really thinking about it. “The war is as good as over. No, it’s not done, but it will be soon. I’m not needed, any more. Or at least, my knowledge of Scanran magic is at present more vital than my healing skills.”

 

            Roald leaned against the doorway. “Are you going to the university, then?”

 

            Mistress Kourrem nodded. “To take devices to pieces and find out how to break them.” She smiled, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “I have a few ideas.”

 

            Roald thought, but did not say, that he was glad she had chosen to throw her lot in with Tortall. “Leave us a forwarding address.”

 

            “What for?” Mistress Kourrem said matter-of-factly, wrapping the teacups individually.

 

            “How else will Shinko and I send you a wedding invitation?” Roald retorted.

 

            Mistress Kourrem actually smiled happily, although she turned away to hide it. “I will be there, if it suits,” she said haughtily, and then her tone gentled. “And if not, I will come anyway.”

 

            Roald counted that as a promise. “Can I help you with your bags?”

 

            “Most kind,” Mistress Kourrem said, and allowed Roald to take the filled saddle-bags from her. “Roald. Wait.”

 

            Roald obediently stopped.

 

            “I knew your father, when he was your age.” Mistress Kourrem’s dark eyes were steady and sharp. “You are twice the man he was then, and he was not without worth.” She sniffed and turned away. “I chose well when I chose to stand by the Conté line.”   

 

            Roald searched for words, and eventually found some. “We’re glad you did.”

 

            “I should hope so,” Mistress Kourrem said briskly, temporary bout of sentimentality apparently over, shutters closed across her face once more. “The number of you who would be dead if I hadn’t interfered does not bear thinking about. A more accident prone family I have seldom met. I trust your bride at least has common sense.”

 

            “Lots of it,” Roald assured her. He hefted the saddlebags. They were extremely heavy; he felt rather sorry for Atiya, although he knew the horse was strong enough to take the weight and Mistress Kourrem wouldn’t push her too hard. “Come on, Mistress Kemail. It’s a long road to Corus.”


End file.
